U.S. President Donald Trump’s company considered offering Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50-million penthouse in a planned skyscraper in Moscow to make the building more desirable to rich buyers, according to the Russian-born real estate developer who was broker on the project.

Felix Sater, a felon, ex-government informant and former Trump business associate, said Thursday he came up with the idea as a way to reap extra profit from Trump Tower Moscow, which he said would have brought in as much as $500 million if it had been built. Then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen approved of the idea, Sater said, adding that it came to him while “spitballing” marketing schemes.

It wasn’t clear how seriously the idea was ever pursued, or whether Trump knew about it.

The Moscow tower deal was scrapped in 2016, though the reasons remain unclear. The disclosure about the penthouse proposal was first reported by Buzzfeed News, which claimed the idea was pitched during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I proposed giving Putin a $50-million penthouse because all of the oligarchs would kill to live in the building, and we could raise prices by an extra $250 million,” said Sater, who worked as an adviser to Trump’s company during the Moscow negotiations and had previously worked with Trump to develop to a building in Manhattan.

In Moscow, “I decided to go after the biggest celebrity in Russia,” Sater said.

The Trump Organization didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Cohen or two of his lawyers. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday night.

Trump’s business dealings in Moscow took center stage earlier Thursday when Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump tower Moscow project in an August 2017 statement to Congress. Cohen admitted he lied when he said that negotiations for the skyscraper ended in January 2016 when in fact they continued until June that year, after Trump cinched the Republican nomination.

Cohen said he made the false statements to minimize links between Trump and the Moscow project and to give the impression that the deal had fallen apart before the first primary, “in the hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations,” according to court papers. He also acknowledged working with “Individual 2” — Sater, according to a person familiar with the matter — in trying to win Russian approval for the project, according to court papers.

Cohen has agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. As part of his plea deal, he admitted he talked to Trump about the Moscow deal more times than he had previously stated and also briefed Trump family members.

Trump on Thursday called Cohen a “weak person” who was lying to get a lighter sentence and stressed that the real estate deal at issue was never a secret and never executed. His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said that Cohen was a “proven liar” and that Trump’s business organization had voluntarily given Mueller the documents cited in the guilty plea “because there was nothing to hide.”

“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it,” Trump said of pursuing the project. “I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”

Donald Trump in Moscow, Russia, for the Miss Universe pageant in November 2013.Ivan Sekretarev/AP, File

He said the primary reason he didn’t pursue it was “I was focused on running for president.”

During the campaign, while publicly espousing a conciliatory relationship with Putin, Trump was repeatedly dismissive of claims that he had connections to the Kremlin, an issue that flared as especially sensitive in the summer of 2016 after the Democratic National Committee and a cybersecurity company asserted that Moscow was behind a punishing cyberattack on the party’s network.

“I have a great company. I built an unbelievable company, but if you look there you’ll see there’s nothing in Russia,” Trump said at a July 2016 news conference.

“But zero, I mean I will tell you right now, zero, I have nothing to do with Russia,” he said.